If you change your story, the probability of your guilt is 1.00. If one version of your story includes a false accusation (i.e., of another person), that goes up to 2.00
At most you could convict them of something like obstruction of justice or criminal defamation, if you could actually prove mens rea beyond reasonable doubt. But convicting somebody of murder just because they made an incorrect or even deliberately false claim, would not serve the interests of justice.
In this case, Knox was actually convicted of “calunnia” against Lumumba. It could be argued whether this conviction was fair, since Knox made the claim in a statement signed at the end of a lengthy interrogation without an attorney, in a language she was not familiar with, and the statement mentions that she “remembered confusedly”. Anyway, fair or not, she already served her term for that false accusation.
Knox’s behavior was worse than mere calumny, whether Italian law recognizes that. The exchanges here and at websites devoted to discussion of the case are just a small consequence of her actions; she completely and permanently disrupted investigation of the brutal destruction of a young woman.
But convicting somebody of murder just because they made an incorrect or even deliberately false claim, would not serve the interests of justice.
I guess that depends on your definition of justice. I use the Sicilian model:
“—but I’m a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall him, if he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell, or if he’s struck by a bolt of lightning, then I’m going to blame some of the people in this room.”
There is a whole range of humanly possible mental states whose existence you seem to be unaware of. It includes all sorts of confusion and anxiety/panic where one’s agency is severely reduced. You can pretend that they aren’t there on the basis that you can’t simulate them, but that won’t make them any less of a fact.
At most you could convict them of something like obstruction of justice or criminal defamation, if you could actually prove mens rea beyond reasonable doubt.
But convicting somebody of murder just because they made an incorrect or even deliberately false claim, would not serve the interests of justice.
In this case, Knox was actually convicted of “calunnia” against Lumumba.
It could be argued whether this conviction was fair, since Knox made the claim in a statement signed at the end of a lengthy interrogation without an attorney, in a language she was not familiar with, and the statement mentions that she “remembered confusedly”.
Anyway, fair or not, she already served her term for that false accusation.
Knox’s behavior was worse than mere calumny, whether Italian law recognizes that. The exchanges here and at websites devoted to discussion of the case are just a small consequence of her actions; she completely and permanently disrupted investigation of the brutal destruction of a young woman.
I guess that depends on your definition of justice. I use the Sicilian model:
“—but I’m a superstitious man, and if some unlucky accident should befall him, if he should get shot in the head by a police officer, or if he should hang himself in his jail cell, or if he’s struck by a bolt of lightning, then I’m going to blame some of the people in this room.”
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v75CFbaajKg )
There is a whole range of humanly possible mental states whose existence you seem to be unaware of. It includes all sorts of confusion and anxiety/panic where one’s agency is severely reduced. You can pretend that they aren’t there on the basis that you can’t simulate them, but that won’t make them any less of a fact.